Bill Hand: Three major New Bern figures took office on March 4

Bill Hand BillHandNBSJ

Sunday

Mar 3, 2019 at 1:27 PMMar 3, 2019 at 1:27 PM

Nowadays, when you win a seat in Congress, your first day of work is January 3, which means you’ve got a little less than two months after winning the race to have your ducks in a row (duck responsibility, duck the press, duck the laws you pass for everyone else). It wasn’t always that way.

We’ve been using the third ever since 1933 when the 20th Amendment took effect.

But in our early days it was March 4th – a Monday this year – that you started your DC job. I don’t know why—maybe roads were just too bad for travel before that date. Lincoln took his seat on that day in 1861, and again in 1865, just a month before he took his fatal seat in the presidential booth at Ford’s Theater.

And so, in honor of this Begin Your Term But Not Anymore day, let’s take a sketchbook glance at three of our most notable politicians-slash-statesmen who began their terms on this day:

• In 1801 John Stanly started his first term as a Federalist in the 7th Congress. This is notable because his election was probably the first step toward the duel that would be one of New Bern’s most famous moments… even though the duel is nothing more than a footnote in many places outside our fair city.

Stanly’s opponent in that race was the elder (if you can call 42 years old elder) statesman, Richard Dobbs Spaight. Mr. Spaight was a notable figure having signed the US Constitution and having served as the first native-born governor of our state. He was assigned by the legislature to replace Nathan Bryan, who chose dying of some disease in 1798 over having to tend yet another of those incredibly dull Congressional sessions.

That 1800 win doubtless set up some animosity between Spaight and Stanly, and the fact that Spaight had switched parties from Stanly’s Federaists to Thomas Jefferson’s Democrat-Republicans probably didn’t help.

When Spaight decided to run for state senate – a post he captured in August, 1802, Stanly derided him, suggesting he had switched parties only as a political move to get more votes. Spaight found out, a month-long shouting match took place and ended with a duelist’s bullet in Mr. Spaight’s side on September 5.

Stanly fled, and begged the governor, Benjamin Williams, to forgive him for killing one of the state’s most beloved statesman. Williams muttered, “Sure, why not?” and did so. Apparently the voters forgave him too, for he won another seat in the 11th Congress in 1808.

• 1897 was the year that James O’Hara took his seat in the 48th Congress. He was a black man, representing the “Black Second” Congressional District which included New Bern.

He wasn’t the first black man in North Carolina to serve. Blacks won not only freedom but the right to vote after the Civil War, but held a majority in the Second District (at that time that included us) in the state.

White’s election angered a lot of North Carolina politicians, especially Furnifold Simmons, who lost his own bid for office to black men in 1896. Simmons, a popular organizer in the Democratic party, decided that the best way to keep blacks from winning was to eliminate the black vote. He oversaw a massive statewide campaign for his fellow Democrats that emphasized the horrors of black rule, and basically ushered in the era of Jim Crow disenfranchisement in the state. As his reward, the party named him to the U.S. Senate (until the 17th Amendment took effect in 1913, U.S. Senators were elected by the state legislatures).

Seeing the impossibility of winning a third term, George H. White did not run in the 1900 race – but in a bold speech before Congress, he promised the black man would return one day to its hallowed halls.

• And so on March 4, 1901, Furnifold Simmons took office.

He would hold his seat until 1931, becoming one of the Senate’s most powerful members, serving on the Committee on Commerce and for several years chaired the Committee on Finance.

Simmons’s undoing was his refusal to back up the presidential run of New York’s Alfred E. Smith in 1928. Smith had taken stands Simmons refused to back – a call to repeal the Prohibition Act, and a tolerance for racial equality. North Carolina followed his lead and voted the Republican, Herbert Hoover, for President.

Simmons lost the 1930 election, carrying only 16 of the state’s 100 counties.

Contact Bill Hand at bill.hand@newbernsj.com or 252-635-5677.

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